Of Best Friends and Baby Carriages
by Hallowed Lotus
Summary: The last thing Kouichi expected when he opened the door to his apartment turns out to be his new first priority. Now the Child of Darkness may find that fighting evil Digimon in a strange world was easy compared to helping a pregnant best friend.
1. Admission

AN: Hey all, ok so I've had this idea scratching at the back of my head for about two months now and I finally decided on an opening for it. Now anyone out there that has read my story Don't Know How knows I take forever to update without inspiration so I'm counting on you lovely readers to review so I won't forget about this story.

Disclaimer: If I owned Digimon this wouldn't be fanfiction

Pairings: No name OCXIzumi, KoujiXTakuya, hints of KoujiXKouichiXTakuya

Summery: The last thing Kouichi expected when he opened the door to his apartment turns out to be his new first priority.

When Kouichi awoke to the sound of his apartment doorbell repeatedly ringing he was expecting one of his neighbors or his landlord to be there ready to yell at him for the blaring horror movie he had fallen asleep watching. He expected his Kouji and Takuya to be there half drunk singing some random song waiting for Kouichi to open the door so they could capture the elder twin. He might also have expected one of his fellow collage students begging for help on their research paper due the next day, hell he would have expected one of his teachers to be on the other side of the door demanding to know why he wasn't in some non-existent class before he would have expected what did await him on the other side of the apartment door. When Kouichi finally did open the door to his small apartment he was greeted by the sight of his best friend, Izumi Oritomo, in her violet night gown, slippers, and bathrobe carrying two steaming StarBucks cups.

Kouichi was stunned for a moment, why was Izumi standing outside his apartment? Yes the two were best friends but they also happened to live nearly five hours apart and normally when one of them needed to talk to the other face to face they would meet at a halfway point. Kouichi may have been a little crazy but even he didn't think it wise to travel five hours on subways in his night clothes, which might explain why he stepped aside to let Izumi in rather then shut the door as he had planned for all the others.

There were no words exchanged between the two as Kouichi led Izumi over to the overstuffed couch he had previously been asleep on and moved his patchwork blanket so she could sit comfortably. Still half asleep Kouichi took the slightly steaming drink that Izumi offered him and raised it to his lips expecting a taste of sweet chocolate. Once again Kouichi's eyes snapped open as he encountered something he hadn't been expecting , Izumi had handed given him coffee.

Three years ago when the pressure of high school had been reaching it's peak Kouichi, who was never good at handling pressure when it came to school, had gone from drinking one cup of coffee in the morning to drinking a cup of can of the stuff nearly every hour. He had become jumpy and snappish after a while and eventually stopped being able to sleep; he just couldn't stop drinking the caffeine saturated drink. When his health started to decline and he started putting on a bit of fat from retaining water, causing him to feel slightly depressed, Izumi had decided to put a stop to his coffee addiction. For 

about five weeks everyone was on edge as the blonde girl slowly forced the child of darkness to channel his worry and panic into something productive rather then a coffee craving, and after many fights and breakdowns she had succeeded. Kouichi had never had another sip of coffee after he was able to stop drinking it for fear of sparking up his unhealthy habit again; if Izumi was giving him coffee to drink something was seriously wrong.

The two stared at each other with equally serious looks; anyone that had an inkling of Izumi and Kouichi's relationship knew that at that moment not even Lucimon's revival would distract either one from the conversation about to transpire. Izumi raised her cup to her lips and took a small sip before motioning for Kouichi to take a drink of his own. Taking a small sip of the coffee Izumi had given him Kouichi waited, his chest tightening, as Izumi took a breath before speaking.

"I'm pregnant."


	2. Reaction

AN: Alright so it's been forever since an update, I'm sorry but no one's reviewed or anything and I kinda forgot that I needed to write for this.

Disclaimer: I'm too poor to own Starbucks, not creative enough to own Digimon, and dear lord do you honestly think I'd be wasting my time writing if I owned Tokio Hotel?

Pairings: No name OCXIzumi, KoujiXTakuya, hints of KoujiXKouichiXTakuya

After their great adventure to the Digital World, and Kouichi's quick brush with death, the six warriors made a point to meet up at least once a week as a group. As it happened along with their weekly meeting it wasn't uncommon to for them to get together with the person they lived closest to so they could goof off and relive their times in the Digital World. Thus Kouji and Takuya were nearly inseparable in school together and totally blew away their opponents away with their teamwork on the soccer field, while Tomoki and Junpei made a point of always having a new trick to show off at their meetings. Kouichi and Izumi however were different.

Because Kouichi hadn't been there for the happier times in the Digital World Izumi never brought up their adventure and Kouichi never asked, they were in different class levels in school, and neither one of them played a sport they could bond over. For a long time the two simply met up just to sit together in the park and bond in their own strange way, until one day when Kouichi had decided that listening to music while he read outside with Izumi would be much more pleasant then listening to screaming children and nearby traffic. He hadn't noticed Izumi getting closer to him until she was nearly sitting in his lap staring at him with wide green eyes.

"Is that Monsoon?"

"Actually it's Durch Den Monsun."

"By Tokio Hotel?"

"Yeah."

After being tackled and having one of his earphones stolen Kouichi discovered that while listening to music while he read was very pleasant it was much more fun to dance to his music with Izumi while they sang; even if people did give them strange looks. From then on their meetings were full of laughs as they talked about their favorite band and their crazy antics; it was the start of their bond, one that grew from music to books, to cooking, to movies. Soon when the group would meet up it would be Kouichi and Izumi that would talk and laugh while the others tried to figure out who TH was and why the two were so interested in him/her.

When they were fourteen their bond took another huge step from common interests, to confidants. Attending the same high school was a real perk for the two as it allowed them to spend more time together and finally be on the same level in school, it also gave Izumi the chance to get Kouichi to talk to her crushes for her. Soon relationships became a common topic for the two, or at least Izumi's relationships did, Kouichi always seemed to shy away from the questions about his crushes. It was heading home with Izumi after one of their group meetings in which Kouichi had stayed with Kouji the night before that the warrior of darkness broke down and cried in his friend's arms about all the things he'd been feeling and how scared he was of disgusting his mother and brother. It was their secret for a time until Izumi insisted Kouichi talk to Kouji about it, somehow the results didn't surprise her, after all the twins were essentially the same person at the core so it seemed natural that if one was gay so was the other.

As it went high school progressed and everyone started to look at what they wanted to do with their lives Izumi had gotten sick of the way Kouji and Kouichi tiptoed around everyone when they talked about crushes and romance. So being the great best friend she was she decided that something must be done to cure her bestest friend and his twin of their dreaded singleness, Kouichi never really let go of the fact that she had spiked their drinks and tricked BOTH him and his brother into bed with Takuya, not that anything serious happened. After many awkward conversations the three boys had agreed to forget the whole ordeal and Kouichi had made Izumi swear never to do something so stupid again.

The summer of their fifteenth year, after Kouichi's horrific coffee addiction was put to rest, Izumi insisted that Kouichi come with her out to the country to visit her family with her. Kouji had protested but in the end even the great and powerful warrior of light didn't have the courage to stand up to Izumi's wrath. After their return Kouichi had been pissed off that his brother had not called to inform him of his getting together with Takuya, and while everyone knew the reason he was angry was because he hadn't been told about something so important Takuya flat out insisted that it was jealousy and had insisted he could defiantly handle both twins. The joke about the three dating never really died and sometimes even the twins had to question whether Takuya was really joking when he flirted with Kouichi.

It was no more than a year later when tragedy struck the Orimoto household. Izumi's father, a loud loving man with his daughter's beautiful blond hair and almost black eyes, had been sick for a long time and during the middle of their sixteenth year he'd taken a turn for the worst. Kouichi had over the years come to see the Italian man as a father after his own had treated him with a cold nature and thus he had been with Izumi at the man's bedside during his final hours, and had wept with her at his passing taking his final fatherly order to heart. Tomiko, Kouichi's mother, had opened her heart and home to Izumi and her mom having also grown to see them as family over time, it was with tears of pain and broken laughs of happy memories that the mothers and their children had rebuilt their lives but it was ok because the next family picture they took showed the four of them standing around the picture of the man they had all lost.

After Junpei graduated and left for collage the former legendary warriors encountered a serious problem, what were they going to do when they had to go their separate ways and couldn't meet weekly like they were used to? It took several fretful meetings and breakdowns before Tomoki finally smacked a dramatic Takuya and declared that they'd just have to space out their meetings a bit and settle for e-mail, phone calls, video messages, texts, and (in Kouichi's case) letters. Needless to say the elder members of the group had felt like idiots.

So they had spaced their meetings out to once a month and really everything was going well among the former warriors, until the time came to actually graduate then once more panic began to fill certain members of their group. Kouji and Takuya were both to attend the same college due to shared interest and similar fields of work, not to mention that after a strong three year relationship the two weren't going to let school separate them. Tomoki was still in high school and was fortunately still close to Junpei so their little duo was safe. The trouble was with Kouichi and Izumi.

Izumi had always loved cooking, both traditional food and foreign dishes and culture, while Kouichi loved writing and had over the years developed a fascination with foreign languages and the culture behind them. The two would often get together to watch all sorts of movies none of the others had ever heard of and it wasn't too uncommon for them to catch Kouichi reading a French or German novel as Izumi cooked a Swiss dish for them. However despite their shared fascination the schools they wanted to attend were approximately five hours apart, and for the two who were used to spending nearly every day together that was unacceptable.

Both looked desperately for a way to stay close together but they couldn't find a way to do so without one having to attend a lesser school then what they wanted, they didn't give up until the hour before they had to depart for their orientations. Kouichi had taken comfort in the fact that his twin and Takuya were no more than twenty minutes away just as Izumi had smiled when she saw that she was only a half hour from Junpei, but that still didn't stop the two from sending almost desperate e-mails to one another nor did it stop the six hour phone calls full of worry and sorrow. It had taken a great deal of effort on both Kouji and Junpei's part but after a few months the two were finally ok with being so far apart, proving with their childish antics at the meetings and during the summer that absence truly does make the heart grow fonder.

Now after years of friendship, joy, tragedy, and trust Izumi watched the young man she'd called brother so often and waited for his reaction, whether it be anger or joy. Izumi knew Kouichi better than almost anyone, Kouji being the only exception and even then while he knew his brother's mind better than her she knew his secrets, but she still didn't know how he would react and truth be told to that day he still surprised her. So it was needless to say that she was caught between worry, hilarity, and surprise when her dearest friend the child of darkness who had looked death in the face and come away grinning reacted like he did.

He fainted.


	3. Question

AN: Nothing real witty today, I'd just like to say I have never died but I hope that what I had Kouichi describe is how death really is.

Disclaimer: Come on now, if I owned Digimon do you really think I would have stopped after 50 episodes?

Pairings: No name OCXIzumi, KoujiXTakuya, hints of KoujiXKouichiXTakuya

When Izumi's first boyfriend dumped her Kouichi had made them a big bowl of buttered popcorn and put on a lame romance movie for them to watch, but they did more talking than watching. When Kouichi had been going through his sexuality crisis Izumi had wrapped the two of them up in a blanket and held her friend as a horror movie they really didn't watch played. That was what they did, Kouichi would pull out a bowl of food to comfort Izumi and Izumi would pull out a fluffy blanket to comfort Kouichi that was just the way it was. So it was needless to say that when Kouichi woke up they put together a huge bowl of snacks and found the fluffiest blanket they could before sitting back on the now coffee stained couch.

Both were silent, this was big, bigger than anything they had ever had to deal with before and it scared them. There were so many questions that needed to be answered but first one of them would have to find the courage to ask them.

Kouichi's breath caught in his throat as he opened his mouth to ask the one question that could break them both. "'Zumi…" He trailed off with a choked noise before steeling his nerves and taking a deep breath to ask the question that he knew he needed to. "Are…are you going to carry the baby to term?" There it was, the one question that both young, too young to be worried about another life, adults feared more than anything else.

Izumi looked up at Kouichi, she knew that no matter what she said he would still stand by her, through tears and troubles, she knew she could just end the pregnancy and no one save for the two of them would ever known about the child's existence. However she saw the shadows of a memory in her dearest friend's eye and she knew that she would have to ask the one question she always feared before she could make her decision.

Looking the child of darkness in the eye, her own bright green reflecting in dark blue, Izumi was taken back to the day she and the other children burst into the hospital room where the doctors were desperately trying to revive the boy. That day haunted her for years the blank lifelessness in his eyes had scared her, she had been so used to seeing the light spark within dark eyes that to look upon them without that spark had made death seem all the more real.

"'Ichi." Izumi paused, her face a mix of a plead for honesty and a plead for a lie. "What…What was death like?"

There it was, the one question that none of the chosen children had had the courage to ask after Kouichi left the hospital. It was a question that filled them with dread and fear, Kouichi understood this and the one time that Kouji had tried to ask had just shaken his head and smiled. His own words still rang in her head, 'Don't think about it Kouji, death comes when it comes there's no point in dwelling on what it's like while you're alive'.

"Contentment." There was no hesitation in Kouichi's voice, no pause in his thoughts as he spoke of his own death for the first time. "I felt like suddenly everything was ok, I didn't have to worry anymore and never would again. It was almost like being in a dreamless sleep, one I would never wake from and that was ok because it was an existence without pain."

Izumi listened with rapt attention as her friend turned brother spoke of death with an almost melancholy voice and wondered if maybe he missed the peace it gave him. But then she saw it, the flicker in his eyes that told of something more.

"It scares me to think of how easily I felt comfortable with the idea of death." Kouichi almost hissed his eyes narrowing dangerously. "The drive to see Kouji in the real world, the want to go home to Mother, the pain of making friends just to lose them, all of it was gone. I was content be dead and to have lost my life in battle without knowing if it had even been worth it."

It was a sad thought but as Kouichi spoke Izumi thought of the death of her own beloved father that had hurt her so much. She thought of the ridicule Kouji, Takuya, and Kouichi faced for their sexuality, she thought of Tomoki and Junpei being pick on for being too big or too small, she thought of all the pain in her life and the lives of her friends and wondered why anyone would want to bring a life into such a sad world. But then another thought came to her, Kouichi had hated his and his mother's poor life while also hating Kouji and his father for their easy life yet something as simple as Patamon's kind words and Kouji's trust had changed all that. As much as Kouichi had hated he loved even more.

"For every bad thing that happens in our life there is good too, right?" Izumi asked in a hushed voice. "There's pain and joy, hate and love." She looked into the dark eyes of her friend and confident with the beginning of tears shining in her own as she realized that this was not a problem that could be swept under the rug without causing hurt. "Death isn't bad but…"

Kouichi reached out and wrapped his arm around his dearest friend's shoulder in a gesture of comfort. "I think everyone deserves a chance to live." He whispered holding the troubled girl close. "But 'Zumi it's your body and your choice and I'll be here for you no matter what."

Soft sobs filled the apartment as the two chosen children clung to each other each begging whoever or whatever was watching over them to help, to listen, to save them from the damning decision they would have to make. Jumping in front of a friend to take an attack for them, fighting an unbeatable enemy, sacrificing everything for friends you'd only just made. That was easy, this? This was hard.


End file.
